Yes, about 4. It comes out of nowhere but it also comes out of thousands of years of poetic tradition, and it seems to fit although I feel as if it shouldn't. Also: silver hare/Midas' gold.
Oh, I love Encounter! I don't remember reading it before, although it's one of those poems that makes me feel as if I've always known it. Thank you for the link! It reminds me of the Kentish nobleman's image in Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (Book II, Chapter 13):
Life is like a banquet hall. Inside is light and fire and warmth and feasting, but outside it is cold and dark. A sparrow flies in through a window at one end, flies the length of the hall, and out through a window at the other end. That is what life is like. At birth we emerge from the unknown, and for a brief while we are here on this earth, with a fair amount of comfort and happiness. But then we fly out the window at the other end, into the cold and dark and unknown future.
Hares and birds, it seems, are persistent symbols of mystery in human minds.
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Oh, I love Encounter! I don't remember reading it before, although it's one of those poems that makes me feel as if I've always known it. Thank you for the link! It reminds me of the Kentish nobleman's image in Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (Book II, Chapter 13):
Life is like a banquet hall. Inside is light and fire and warmth and feasting, but outside it is cold and dark. A sparrow flies in through a window at one end, flies the length of the hall, and out through a window at the other end. That is what life is like. At birth we emerge from the unknown, and for a brief while we are here on this earth, with a fair amount of comfort and happiness. But then we fly out the window at the other end, into the cold and dark and unknown future.
Hares and birds, it seems, are persistent symbols of mystery in human minds.